The Coping Skills of Tonks
by Inconsequential
Summary: Subtle Deathly Hallows spoilers  As Tonks waits for Lupin's return, she ponders such things as the STDlike nature of lycanthropy, the similarities between Greyback and Michael Jackson, and neon orange fetuses.  Strong T rating for mature themes.


Disclaimer: The really tactless advertisement in this story, which you may recognize, does not belong to me. Nor does HP. This idea just fell on my head and, since I think most of the world of HP can be summed up as a metaphor for some aspect of Muggle life, I decided that lycanthropy is analogous to…

Tonks was watching television in her parents' house with her feet on her mother's lap. Andromeda, who had never seen any Muggle media before meeting Ted, remained fascinated by the colorfully flickering box, and the family had a habit of gravitating toward the television, and more specifically, daytime soap operas, to relieve stress. When Andromeda and Ted had found out they couldn't have any more children after Tonks, they sat down for an hour and watched a sappy comedy show after a long, heart-wrenching talk. When Tonks broke up with Charlie Weasley because of his strange dragon fetish (he kept asking her to morph scales at intimate moments, which she found disturbing, to say the least), she sat and watched sitcoms with a box of tissues until she could laugh at her situation.

Now, Remus had gone off to Harry, and Tonks had fled to the refuge of her family home, loath to explain the situation to her mother. She passed off her drab hair and unchanging face as a precaution taken due to her pregnancy. And really, she pondered, what _might_ it do to a non-metamorphmagus baby if its mother kept changing features? Did she alter her genetic material? Would her son or daughter possess purple or green hair just because that's what she'd happened to have on at its conception? Would it be multi-colored? And Remus thought producing a werewolf was bad… what if it kept spontaneously shifting its appearance _all the time_?

As Tonks mulled over these questions, ignoring what really bothered her in the hopes that it would go away, an ad came on screen. It was for an STD-repressing medication. Tonks, who instinctively, on a subconscious level, _always_ saw the humor in a situation, could not help comparing the distinguished, pepper-haired man and the laughing, brown-eyed woman to herself and Remus. Smiling inwardly, she made up her own commercial, complete with really stupid narration:

"_He has lycanthropy. She doesn't. And he takes once-monthly Wolfsbane to keep it that way…"_

It was _so silly_. Muggles had things like AIDs, which was far worse than lycanthropy. And things like that were passed on just be contact with mucus membranes. For Remus to infect her, he would have to bite her on one of the twelve days a year when he happened to have a… furry 'flare-up.'

Tonks could simply not help chuckling at the conceit.

And after all, Remus had just been a kid when he'd been infected by Greyback, whom she would hereafter compare to a strange kind of infection-spreading pederast (his Muggle equivalent).

Next time she faced him in battle, she would have to use that comparison. That would really make him angry. Althrough his penchant for young flesh already seemed mightily akin to sexual deviancy.

Andromeda looked curiously at her daughter, but said nothing.

Soon, the doorbell rang.

Both witches leapt to their feet, wands outstretched.

"Who is it?" Andromeda cried, motioning for Tonks to step back.

"It is I, Remus Lupin, extremely contrite werewolf, husband to Dora Lupin, if she'll have me. My first stuffed animal was a kelpie named Bobo. May I come in, please?"

There was a note of desperation in his voice.

Tonks' hair turned a shocking orange, and she imagined her baby as a neon-colored fetus, though she hoped this would not remain the case. She opened the door.

Remus stood before her, looking anguished.

"Dora, I am so sorry," he said. "Can you ever forgive me?"

Tonks shrugged, still slightly logy from too much television. "I thought you'd be back," she said vaguely. "Anyway, listen… you really need to see this commercial on the television. It'll change your whole outlook on life. By the way, don't you think Greyback has a lot in common with Michael Jackson? Apart from the moonwalking, I mean. Oh, and I thought you might like to know—I think I've turned our child neon-colored."

Remus gaped at her, extremely confused. Then he was leveled by a series of hexes from Andromeda.

"HOW DARE YOU WALK OUT ON MY DAUGHTER!" Mrs. Tonks shrieked, looking uncomfortably much like her older sister Bellatrix. She proceded to launch into what would, Tonks knew, become an hour-long rant.

Tonks sighed and walked back over to the couch. She turned the television back on and settled in to watch it, certain that once her favorite program was finished, all would be well.

And it was, though Greyback's decision to kill her and her husband was largely motivated by her comparing him to a moonwalking pederast, and for the rest of his life, Teddy Lupin and all of his offspring felt the guttural need to turn brilliant orange at very inopportune moments.


End file.
